A blog about writing, science fiction, the future of publishing, books and me.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

My Writing Week: Issue 4, Year 5.

Hi
all,

Communication
problems was my theme last week.

Byline
Missing From Divine Article

I
had a new
article posted on Divine last week. The article was about hiding my
ulcerative colitis from the world. I failed to notice the article lacked a by-line.
Some readers might have thought that I wanted to remain anonymous and still hid
my disease. I was notified of the problem the next day and the article is now
attributed to me.

I
have received a number of comments on the article on the Divine site and on
facebook. As a result, if I wrote the article again I would include another
reason for not telling the world I had ulcerative colitis: people offering
dietary and medical advice. Over the years I have come across lots of natural
therapies and dietary changes that supposedly cure ulcerative colitis, none of
them have worked.

A
big problem with ulcerative colitis is that it comes and goes. So say it is
active and I decide to try one of the various “cures”. I choose a cure of
standing on one leg while singing I’m too Sexy for my Shirt. After a couple of
months of no sign of the disease, I might become convinced my cure has worked.
But the disease returns a couple of months later leaving me feeling slightly
gullible.

Typos
in The Dervish House

In
my last blog post I pointed out three typos I had seen in Ian McDonald’s novel The
Dervish House. I then added a comment about a further two typos. I did
not point these typos out as a complaint, just an observation. The typos have
not influenced my enjoyment of the novel. I finished reading it last night and hope
to post a review sometime this week.

Problems
with Technology

Karl
Marx was convinced chemicals were added to bread to make it go stale faster.
Maybe they are. I am convinced that electronic manufacturers start sending bugs
over the web to computers and printers two years after the machines are first
used. These bugs eventually cause so many problems that a consumer gives up and
buys a new machine.

The
first two IBM second-hand computers I bought lasted five and seven years
respectively. The current Compaq began acting up about a month after its two
year warranty ended. I doubled its Ram memory and the computer behaved for
about seven months. But now it keeps having start-up problems.

The
first printer I bought lasted over seven years. The last two, including the one
I destroyed in a fit of rage last week, lasted about two years each before they
started acting up.

So
Hewlett Packard and Cannon, I am aware of what you are doing.

My
Novel Writing

My
printer and discussions about my article and blog post, took up a lot of
writing time last week. As a result, I added the least weekly amount of words
to my novel since I started writing it at the beginning of November: a paltry
1300 words.

This
week has not started any better. My computer decided to have start-up problems
this morning. A blue screen said something about a corrupt file. As requested, I
did yet another restore, the third in two weeks.

And
the cricket starts tomorrow. And it’s My Birthday on Wednesday. And then Australia Day on
Thursday. And I have to spray the fruit with malathion on Saturday…

I just wish my computer would be consistent in its error messages. It's like there are termites slowly eating files which need to be replaced. Happened last time too. The error messages gave no clue to the problem that the computer had used up all its RAM. Memory tests, like the one I just did, found nothing.